Op-Ed
The Diffident Ivy
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The hot topic on campus is financial aid, and everyone’s asking the same question: is Cornell going to follow the other Ivies’ lead and come out against student loans?
With Harvard, Yale and Princeton eliminating all loans in favor of grants, and Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn promising debt-free packages to low-income students, we’re sticking out like a Big Red sore thumb in continuing to offer loans instead of grants to struggling undergrads. This may all change within the next 36 hours, however, following President Skorton’s announcement last night that the University would unveil a more “robust” plan for financial aid.
Robust or not, the new plan may amount to too little, too late.
Until recently, critics of the University were mollified by Cornell’s relatively small endowment and large undergraduate population — factors that made it all but impossible for Day Hall to offer competitive aid packages — but after the revelation that only 5.6 percent of the ongoing Capital Campaign would be earmarked for financial aid, important elements of the Cornell community are questioning the University’s commitment to its students in need.
Just this weekend, Cornell bigwigs gathered at Cipriani 42nd Street for a lavish celebration to celebrate the halfway mark in the Far Above Campaign — $2 billion raised since October 2006, with another $2 billion coming before 2011. So, you might ask, why, of the eventual $4 billion in endowment gains, is only $225 million allocated for financial aid?
The answer, as best I can tell, is that despite Day Hall’s best intentions, Cornell is stuck in a self-defeating cycle of second-class aspirations.
It shouldn’t go without saying that Cornell has done a tremendous job in raising resources for its students. As Provost Biddy Martin noted in an e-mail message, the oft-cited $225 million figure does not include an additional $250 million that was raised for student aid before the Far Above Campaign kicked off, meaning that Cornell’s “anticipated increased [financial aid] endowment over time is at least $475 million,” as Martin said — more than double what has been previously reported. Moreover, according to Martin, the $225 million figure is a “minimum goal, not an upper bound,” so the University’s commitment to financial aid might well exceed its predictions.
It also shouldn’t go without saying that Cornell administrators have very high hopes for the University.
“I want to remind you,” President Skorton told Sun editors in a poignant reflection during a meeting on Monday, “that I’m a first generation college student, from a family that couldn’t afford to do much. It took me 20 years to pay my loans off, and for that reason, I have a personal commitment to see us do better in this regard.”
Indeed, Martin said that she “envision[s] a time when Cornell will offer no-loan financial aid for some income levels and an upper limit on loans for other income levels within the need population,” a goal that she foresees the Capital Campaign enabling the University to reach. And among those responsible for building our endowment, notably Charles Phlegar, who is spearheading the Far Above Campaign, there is a sentiment that “Cornell needs more money for financial aid,” as Phlegar told me.
What has gone without saying, at least until very recently, is that Cornellians are expecting a dramatic change of pace when President Skorton offers his new plan for financial aid.
At least relative to other salient campus issues, the stakes couldn’t be higher. An editorial in Monday’s Sun announced a “crisis of conscience,” while a columnist declared an “emergency” situation. In both cases, Cornell was deemed the “stingiest Ivy,” with no less than “the survival of its public mission” on the line, according to the editorial board. These overtures in the press come with the support of “Cornellians Demand No-Loan, Now!,” a Facebook group that has amassed the support of over 250 students so far.
With so much on the line, and with such a daunting precedent set by its peers, shouldn’t Cornell be allocating more of its soon-to-be-doubled endowment to financial aid?
The decision to earmark a relatively small percentage of our endowment gains to financial aid seems to be symptomatic of a more troubling aspect of Cornell’s élan vital: a persistent inferiority complex that says, “We didn’t go to Harvard,” so why bother trying?
And to a certain extent, that’s logical. Say what you want about the University earmarking over $1 billion of the campaign money to new buildings on campus — about six times more than it’s allocating for aid — but there’s a case to be made that state-of-the-art facilities will attract more students than aid packages that will fall short anyway.
“Because we are a large, comprehensive university with a smaller endowment than some of our smaller, less comprehensive peers, we have a wide range of priorities,” Martin said, echoing President Skorton’s concern that it’s “nearly impossible to do exactly what a school does that has an endowment five times ours with half the number of students.”
“Harvard has a $35 billion endowment,” Phlegar said, noting that the annual interest they earn off of their holdings is larger than our total endowment. As University Economist Ronald Ehrenberg explained, “Our resources will never permit us to do as much as our richer competitors — Harvard, Yale and Princeton — have done.”
When the announcement comes tomorrow or Friday — if I had to guess, I’d say that it would promise no-loan financial aid to families earning under $30,000 — it won’t be because everyone from President Skorton to a freshman on scholarship supports it; no, it will be because Harvard did it, and Yale did it, and so on and so forth.
We’re not having a crisis of conscience, as the Sun argued Monday, but a crisis of confidence. When it’s all said and done, we may not be the stingiest Ivy, but we’ll undoubtedly be the most diffident.
Rob Fishman is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at rbfishman@cornellsun.com. Agree to Disagree appears Tuesdays.